Beth Nielsen Chapman had always been good at that: She’d penned hits for Willie Nelson, Faith Hill and many others, and for more than a quarter century she’d been filling her own albums with precise, incisive language. But suddenly she wasn’t good at it, at all.

“It was like a shadow that grew and grew,” Chapman said. “I go all over the world and teach workshops on creative flow, but nothing was working, and the writer’s block got more noticeable.”

Co-writer Annie Roboff noticed it when she and Chapman were trying to write a song called “Even As it All Goes By.”

“She said, ‘Something’s wrong with you,’” Chapman recalled. “I said, ‘Maybe I’ve got too much on my plate,’ and she said, ‘When do you not have too much on your plate?’”

Point taken, as Chapman typically juggles songwriting, performing, recording, teaching, motherhood and multiple charity projects. This was deeper than distraction, as was confirmed when Vanderbilt neurologists explained that a brain tumor was pressing against Chapman’s left frontal lobe.

“I asked about that part of the brain, and they said, ‘Well, it’s the part of the brain that puts emotions into words.’ My ego went, ‘Cool, the writer’s block isn’t just me,’ and the rest of me went, ‘Holy cow, I have a brain tumor.’”

After a successful surgery last year to remove what turned out to be a fast-growing but benign tumor, Chapman woke in an anesthetic haze, and asked for a pencil. She was soon writing lines such as, “As fleeting as the first light on a window sill/ Reaching through the darkest night, it can never be still.”

Within a week and a half, she’d finished the songs for Back to Love, an album that began achingly, ploddingly, and was completed with speed and no small measure of joy.Continue reading →

Season tickets are sold out for this year’s series, but tickets to the individual concerts are still available for $95 per carload of folks. Don’t get any big ideas, though — no RVs or buses are allowed.